Three up, three down at NBA turning point

Timberwolves get it right in pursuit of first playoff spot since 2004, Doug Smith writes, plus more NBA surprises and disappointments with a third of the season already in the books.

Andrew Wiggins, working on a way around Bradley Beal of the Wizards, is one of the reasons why the Minnesota Timberwolves appear destined to end a long NBA playoff drought. (Hannah Foslien / GETTY IMAGES)

The NBA has passed the one-third mark of the regular season, about the time when things start to legitimately shake out throughout the league. The usual suspects still dominate the top of each conference — Boston, Toronto and Cleveland in the East; Golden State, Houston and San Antonio in the West — and there’s no reason to think that will change in the final two-thirds of the schedule. But there have been some surprises and it will be interesting to see if some teams can stay in that category. And there have been some disappointments that have ruined the season for others. Here’s a look:

SURPRISES

MINNESOTA

The young Timberwolves were in dire need of some leadership from within the roster and some veteran stability. They got that and more from Jimmy Butler — who’d be in the most valuable player conversation with LeBron James, James Harden and Kevin Durant today — and Minnesota seems poised to make its first playoff appearance since 2004. They’ll have to deal with Jeff Teague’s knee injury, suffered on Wednesday night, but Butler and Taj Gibson have been all they were supposed to be.

CHICAGO

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The season could have gone entirely sideways before it even began when Bobby Portis slugged teammate Niko Mirotic in practice, and the Bulls were one of the worst teams in the league through 20 games. A 10-game winning streak righted the ship a bit and Chicago’s still on the outside of the playoffs looking in, but the play of Lauri Markkanen and Kris Dunn holds some promise for the future. There’s likely to be a trade before the Feb. 8 deadline, but the Bulls aren’t nearly as bad as some expected.

BROOKLYN

The Nets at 12-22 (13th among 15 Eastern Conference teams as play began Thursday night) is nothing to crow about. But considering where Brooklyn was and the rebuilding task faced by general manager Sean Marks and coach Kenny Atkinson, being on pace to win 26 or 27 games represents a giant leap forward. It will also diminish the value of their 2018 first-round draft pick, so coveted by Cleveland in the Kyrie Irving trade with Boston.

DISAPPOINTMENTS

MILWAUKEE

The Bucks were the flavour of the month when the season began, the Eastern Conference team that was supposed to take large strides behind the uniquely talented Giannis Antetokounmpo. But even the addition of Eric Bledsoe in an early-season trade with the Suns hasn’t helped an awful lot. The Bucks began play Thursday stumbling along in seventh place in the East, two games over .500 and closer to 10th than home-court playoff position.

MEMPHIS

It wasn’t going to be a great year for the perennially playoff-bound Grizzlies after they let veterans Tony Allen, Zach Randolph and Vince Carter walk away in the summer, changing the veteran dynamic of the team greatly. But point guard Mike Conley got hurt, coach David Fizdale was fired, Marc Gasol has taken a step back, and the Grizzlies are fighting Dallas and the Lakers for the worst record in the Western Conference. The playoffs seem an impossibility, and the trade talk around Gasol will increase in the next month.

CHARLOTTE

The Hornets seem much less than the sum of their parts, 10 games below .500 and unable to find any sustained success. A team with point guard Kemba Walker, wings such as Nik Batum and centre Dwight Howard might not be a legitimate top-four contender, but it should be better than 12-22 and facing near-impossible odds to even sneak in the post-season. Could coach Steve Clifford be the next one on the firing line?

Around the league

There’s definitely a little juice still flowing through 40-year-old Vince Carter. Hearkening back to the old days, Carter had 24 points as the Sacramento Kings upset the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night, becoming the first player 40 or older to ever score more than 20 points coming off the bench. Carter’s production also made him the oldest to score 24 points in a game since John Stockton did it in 2003. “He’s a hall of famer for a reason, let’s not take that for granted,” LeBron James said after the game. “Once he got going, we couldn’t slow him down.”

NIK OF TIME: Nik Stauskas is thriving, relatively, after being dealt from the Philadelphia 76ers to the Brooklyn Nets this month. In Philadelphia, the Mississauga native had 17 games where he did not play by coach’s decision or was inactive, and in the six games he did play it was never for more than 10 minutes. He took a grand total of one three-pointer, which he missed. Unshackled in Brooklyn, he seems to have been reborn, averaging nearly 15 minutes a game — after sitting out the first four to get acclimated — and going 19-for-33 from deep. Those totals include seven three-pointers made when the Nets lost to the New Orleans Pelicans on Wednesday.

OFF THE MARC: Marc Gasol of the Memphis Grizzlies is generally regarded as one of the best passing big men in the game, if not the best, but he’s been off his game a lot this year for the stumbling club. The veteran centre has already had three games where he didn’t record a single assist. That matches his total of zero-assist games from the last two seasons combined.

INACTION JACKSON: It’s been a weird year for the Detroit Pistons and it got a lot worse this week. Having gone through a seven-game losing streak only to recover and win five of six, while hanging on to a top-four spot in the Eastern Conference, the Pistons were dealt a blow when point guard Reggie Jackson went down with a seriously sprained ankle. Jackson was hurt during a loss to Indiana and will be out of the lineup for at least a month, a huge blow to the promising season that was unfolding in Detroit.

HELP ME, RONDO: Rajon Rondo’s abilities as a facilitator are well known. At times in his career, the point guard has appeared to like nothing more than piling up assists without bothering to look to score himself. He set not only a personal high but a New Orleans Pelicans franchise mark — that’s a franchise that used to employ Chris Paul — with 25 assists Wednesday in a win over the Brooklyn Nets. Rondo accomplished the feat while playing only 30 minutes and scoring only one basket. It was the most assists in an NBA game since Jason Kidd had 25 back in 1996.